Namaste, My Brethren [judd]

Lying on my mat, the lights turned low, I feel like I’m back in Miss Warfel’s Kindergarten class at Pine Street Elementary. Quiet time. Only, unlike when I was 5, this quiet time is welcome.

It’s Wednesday lunchtime in work-a-day America. To my right lies our accounting director, on my left a department manager, across the room a couple of IT programmers and an administrative assistant.

We’re all as relaxed and calm as we will be all day, perhaps all week, until we find ourselves back here with Lori.

Lori, our yoga instructor.

How do I feel about Lori? It’s hard to say. She’s more than just an instructor, but she’s not really a mentor or spiritual guide.

She’s a teacher. Like Miss Warfel. Except it’s my choice to be here.

Most of the time I feel like a yoga Kindergartner. Even when we started a new series of yoga classes, and some new people joined us, I still felt like a beginner.

When we’re doing our sun-salutes (reach up, bend to the floor, head up, lower to the floor, up dog, down dog), Lori still comes around to me and gently urges my shoulders apart, pushes down on my lumbar, forcing me to both relax and work harder.

That’s one of the paradoxes of yoga. As I work harder, as I push myself and stretch myself, I am more comfortable, more satisfied. I reach a little higher, finding myself elevated and freer.

As we go through the sun salutes, the down dogs get more difficult, my arms start to tremble a bit, I hope not visibly, but no one is watching anyway. We are all on our own mats in our own spaces, just me and the teacher. Henry the programmer is alone with the teacher. Barb the secretary is over there with the teacher. Janet the CPA is right next to me with her teacher.

All the teachers are Lori and somehow we are all together but we are all having a one-on-one with Lori.

Their arms may be trembling too. Barb, who is a bit older than me, tells me that sometimes she has to take breaks. But I don’t see it.

It’s me, the down dog, and Lori.

And my breathing.

Breathe. Lori has taught us to breathe, or to be aware of our breathing. Sometimes we do an exercise where we just sit and breathe. We are to meditate on our breathing and only on our breathing. Lori reads to us from a yoga master.

“As I breathe in I say to myself ‘I am breathing in’.” Lori’s voice is soothing, like a Miss Warfel for grown-ups. “As I breathe out I say to myself ‘I am breathing out’.”

Or, Lori tells us, just think “in” as you breathe in and “out” as you breathe out.

Simple? No. It’s incredibly difficult to stay in that moment. My mind wants to wander to everything that happened in the morning, everything that’s coming in the afternoon, the sandwich that’s waiting for me after class (I have tomato to go on my turkey and swiss....yeah!), band practice at church that night, the damn report I forgot to write for church council...

But I come back to in and out, in and out.

Yoga takes the simplest, most fundamental act we do and can control -- our breathing -- and turns it into a spiritual tool.

For an hour each week, I get down to what is essential. For an hour each week I consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air.

Sabbath.

I don’t know how far I’ll plumb the depths of yoga. I’m interested in the Sanskrit and the philosophy but have yet to pursue it.

For now, it’s a simple start to a complex path.

And that’s okay.

No one is expecting me to recite chapter and verse from a Sanskrit yoga holy book.

No one is judging my enlightenment on whether I serve on a committee or buy a chicken barbeque ticket.

No one tells me I’m sitting on the wrong yoga mat or that I’m not wearing the right clothes for yoga or that I need to concentrate harder on my breathing.

Still, it’s so hard to let go of old thoughts and patterns.

One holds me tightly in its grip. I long to please and to be affirmed. I want to be complimented by Lori. I want to be able to hold my balance pose longer than the other students. I want the new students to look at my Warrior 2 pose as a shining example.

Truthfully, I want to be noticed. (Doesn’t every writer want this, at some level?)

Yoga didn’t teach me this; I’ve known it for a long time. I like being the center of attention. I want to sing solos in church. I draw affirmation from cracking a joke at a meeting. I want to come up with the best idea and not just because that idea might help my company or my work team or my family. I want everyone to say, “Judd had the best idea.”

Hooray for me.

Something strange, however, happened the other day in class. Lori singled me out as we were trying, toward the end of a lesson, to do a pose that only comes with lots of practice. We were all having some fun and laughing a bit as we tried this difficult exercise.

Somehow, I happened to get fairly close to doing it. Lori complimented me and all eyes in the class turned toward me.

And it felt uncomfortable. I was the center of attention and I didn’t like it. I was not where I wanted to be, alone on my mat, just me and the teacher.

Is it possible that yoga is making me a better person? I think that is answered best by another question. Would it be possible to become a worse person by trying something, like yoga, that stretches me and challenges me?

No, anything that challenges us makes us stronger. Any time we spend slowing down, calming ourselves, getting back in touch with our natural rhythms benefits us and, as a result, those around us.

Sabbath.

At the end of each class, Lori closes with one word... namaste. (Pronounced NAHM-uh-stay) There are various interpretations, one of which is “The divine in me sees the divine in you.”

It’s all so Christ-like. The holiness in me recognizing the holiness in you. God incarnate within each of us, recognizing the Christ living in you. Taking time to find my inner child of God so I can better see the God-child in you.

Namaste, my brothers. Namaste, my sisters.